


Autocrat - Forgiveness

by cutsycat



Series: Dictionary.Com Word of the Day Drabbles [1465]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21623611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cutsycat/pseuds/cutsycat
Summary: Tony realizes that Gibbs has gone off the rails. Can he forgive Gibbs? Can he forgive himself?
Series: Dictionary.Com Word of the Day Drabbles [1465]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/444514
Comments: 16
Kudos: 33
Collections: 2019 Gen Angst Week Challenge, The Writer's Guild Community





	Autocrat - Forgiveness

**Author's Note:**

> Another dictionary.com word of the day drabble. This time from 05/05/2003 for the word [autocrat](http://www.dictionary.com/wordoftheday/2003/05/05/autocrat).
> 
> autocrat[ aw-tuh-krat ]  
> noun  
> an absolute ruler, especially a monarch who holds and exercises the powers of government as by inherent right, not subject to restrictions.  
> a person invested with or claiming to exercise absolute authority.  
> a person who behaves in an authoritarian manner; a domineering person.
> 
> This is for Day 7 of the Gen Angst Week challenge. Today's prompt is Forgiveness.

Tony watched Gibbs. He always watched Gibbs. He'd been watching Gibbs long before anyone else joined the team.

These days he struggled with the way Gibbs changed. It used to be that they were a team. That they worked together. 

Now, now Gibbs was just an autocrat. It was his way or the highway. Gibbs didn't even back Tony up anymore. The SFA position held no more authority than any other position on the team.

That didn't used to be the way it was, but things had changed and not for the better. Tony had forgiven Gibbs for a lot, especially after he made the rule, "Sometimes, I'm wrong." He'd thought things were getting better, but now he wasn't so sure. 

The latest case had gone wrong from the start. They’d listened to the wrong people all the way down the line and it had resulted in Gibbs being shot by a kid. Tony didn’t blame himself for that as it had been Gibbs’ choice that had put them in that situation, but now Tony was faced with another decision.

Gibbs was out for a couple of weeks due to the injury. Did Tony try to change things knowing Gibbs would be pissed when he returned? Or did he just keep the status quo and look for another job?

Sometimes things just couldn’t be forgiven anymore and Gibbs had stepped too far over the line with this one. It was one thing to look the other way for things that weren’t actually illegal and just morally grey. It was another thing when someone was doing truly illegal things and expecting everyone to just ignore it. 

It would be so much easier if he could say that Gibbs had turned evil and there was no redeeming him, but that wasn’t the case at all. He was still mostly a good man. Tony was torn and he hated it. It felt like Danny all over again and the fact that Gibbs had been the one to help him take Danny down was a kind of irony that Tony didn’t find amusing in the slightest.

He could forgive Gibbs for not being perfect, but he couldn’t forgive NCIS for looking the other way and not addressing it. He knew that Vance had buried Gibbs revenge killing of Pedro Hernandez, which had been bad enough, but understandable. 

Gibbs had lost everything and revenge was the only thing that made sense then, but he’d changed and he’d focused on preventing crimes. Plus, Pedro was a bad guy and no one was sad that he wasn’t in the world anymore. If Vance had let it be known that Gibbs had gone for revenge like that, it could have called all the cases they’d solved into question and that would have been worse.

Of course, this case was going to force that anyway and if NCIS didn’t get Gibbs some help then they would be facing significant inquiry. Tony could only hope that Gibbs would actually take this time to reflect on what happened and to readdress everything he’d been doing that was wrong. If he did that and NCIS did what they needed to, then Tony wouldn’t need to find another job, but as it was currently Tony didn’t know if they deserved forgiveness.

The whole thing was a nightmare of emotional ties. No matter what was done someone would get hurt. Actually multiple people had already been hurt. 

He knew he couldn’t dwell on it; that he needed to forgive Gibbs and NCIS in order for him to move on, but that was easier said than done. He couldn’t explain why this case had been the breaking point for him. He knew that others would think some of Gibbs’ previous actions far more egregious, but in the past Gibbs had always chosen Tony. He hadn’t this time. 

He dearly needed to talk to Gibbs about this. He wasn’t ready for that conversation, however. He didn’t think Gibbs would handle his ultimatum of “you need to fix this or I’m walking” well. 

He knew it was an indication of how unhealthy things had gotten that Gibbs ignoring Tony’s warnings was the final straw and not anything that happened previously. Abby, McGee, and Ziva had put him through hell while Gibbs was in Mexico and he’d just gritted his teeth and powered through it, but he couldn’t do that here. He’d been looking the other way too many times. He should have stepped up sooner, before Gibbs got this out of control. 

He knew Gibbs wouldn’t listen to him any better now, so Tony didn’t bother talking to him. He could forgive Gibbs and he could forgive NCIS, but the person he couldn’t forgive was himself. Why hadn’t he done anything to stop this sooner? Why hadn’t he realized how bad Gibbs was getting?

He was right there with Gibbs day in and day out. He should have seen when Gibbs went off the rails, but he hadn’t noticed until it was too late. There was no penance that he could perform that would be good enough to fix this. 

Maybe the team would be better off if he left. He was clearly too close to the problem. They needed someone clear headed to come in and fix things. Tony didn’t think he could do that. Not after everything they’d already been through. 

He was too weak. It wasn’t that he was afraid of Gibbs, so much that he was concerned that he couldn’t change Gibbs. He’d finally realized that Gibbs was so far off the rails that a minor course correction couldn’t fix it. 

The entire train needed to be derailed before it crashed and killed everyone in it. Tony could only hope that whoever came behind him was better able to stop the train before it barreled into a bunch of innocents. With a heavy heart, Tony typed up his resignation letter and turned it into Vance before he left for the day.

He would plan for his last day to be the day Gibbs came back. He knew it was time for him to get off this train, but he still didn’t know if he’d ever be able to forgive himself. It was even harder to forgive himself than to forgive the others involved. It always was. 

It didn’t help that it felt like he was giving up. It only made him feel like he didn’t deserve to be forgiven even more. If past transgressions were any indication, it would take him years before he’d be ready to forgive himself for this. In the meantime, he needed to find another way to help others. Maybe it was time to try out trial science to make sure the bad guys paid for their crimes once they were caught, instead of trying to actually catch the bad guys.

**Author's Note:**

> The dictionary.com series has no stories already written for it after this one, so I will be posting at least no more stories before I stop posting again. I'm hoping to get more stories written before then, so that I don't stop posting for a while. Wish me luck! 
> 
> It's 2019 now and I have closed my 2018 Prompt collection, but fear not my 2019 Prompt Collection is now open [here](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/cutsycat_NCIS_Prompts_2019/profile). Just click the sign up link. ;) It will remain open until the beginning of 2020. I'm hoping to complete all the 2019 prompts by the end of 2020. Do not fear I have not forgotten about the 2018 prompts and will continue working through them. It's just easier for me to not get overwhelmed if I keep the prompts separated by the year they were given to me.
> 
> If you are not an ao3 member, you can prompt me [here](http://cutsycat.livejournal.com/50701.html). Please follow the same rules as are listed in the above link. However, because this is a handmade prompt form(that thinks it's a poll), it is considerably more limited than what ao3 provides, so please use the ao3 form if you're an ao3 member. Please note the name option is for a name that I can say this is for so that you know it's for you. Since this is for non ao3 members it won't be true gifts, but you will be mentioned in the notes. Please note if you have already voted in the poll and would like to request more stories you can just add a comment to the poll. Please include the name along with the prompt, so that I can appropriately gift the prompt to you.
> 
> For any authors that want to chat and/or are looking for a place where they can toss plot ideas around and get input from people, you can come join my discord server that is specifically geared towards writing/encouraging people to write and authors. The invite link is [here](https://discord.gg/HFvwpCq). If you're not an author, but want to chat with me about writing/stories or anything else you are welcome to join. I reserve the right to boot you from my server if all you do is pester me about updates, however. *grin* Really anyone who wants to talk about writing and/or plot ideas for various stories is welcome to join. 
> 
> Also, Drakonyashka has translated a couple of my works into Russian. [Tutelage](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12378780) and [Imbue](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12378840). Go support them. 


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